Battle Hymn (5 page)

As the sun disappeared, all now turned eastward and within seconds the first faint sliver of a moon broke the horizon, followed immediately by a second moon, appearing only a hand's span to the right. Wild cheering broke out, with the strange accompaniment of a steam whistle and a booming cannon.

Ha'ark said to Hans, "It is the night of the Moon Feast. You know that."

Hans nodded.

"Shall I tell you the names of the prisoners I bartered for with the Merki?"

"No need to," Hans replied, knowing what was coming.

"More than fifty Rus from your army, taken at Hispania and in the skirmishing that followed the Merki withdrawal. We have more than four thousand Cartha." He hesitated. "And you and your—what did you call her—your wife."

Hans watched him as he continued. "I have Hinsen, but I know you'd love to see him go to the Moon Feast. As for the others, the offer is simple. Many of them worked in the iron factories, a few even on the railroads and in armories. We've even taken half a hundred prisoners of our own, in skirmishes with your army in the lands between what you call the Great Sea and the Inland Sea. I promise every one of them life for as long as they are willing to work."

"Or?"

"They will go to the Moon Feast this very evening if you refuse to cooperate."

Hans sat in silence, his heart torn. If it were only himself, he knew the answer: He would have almost welcomed it. Why did Tamira come into my life? he wondered. There was a small part of him that still thought that the lovely young woman now asleep in the yurt must somehow have a pact with the Horde, that she was sent to him for just this purpose, to seduce him. But he knew that could not be. He had looked too often into her eyes, had held her close to him too many nights, not to know her love and to know his own as well, a love he had never dreamed would come to him.

But we could be free. There would be only the moment of final terror for her, and we would be free, rather than being among the living dead.

"All of them," Ha'ark said again. "I understand that at the funeral of the Merki Qar Qarth you witnessed the slaughter of a hundred thousand and you alone were spared."

Hans tried to force the memory away … the blood-filled pit, the insane hysteria of killing, and I alone the Lazarus to remember it.

"You will see it again, Sergeant. Know that I can get others to do the labor, so nothing will change. The machines will be built, the war will come, and you will watch the agonizing torture of your wife. And I promise you, when it is revealed who you are and who she is, there are many who will delight in dragging out the torment till dawn."

As if to add weight to his argument, a hysterical scream sounded from the encampment below—the first victim being dragged to the pit.

"You've not seen a Bantag Moon Feast, have you, Sergeant?"

"The Merki do it well enough."

"They do some extra forms of entertainment in my Horde," Ha'ark said quietly. "They believe that the torment, the screaming, the struggle, make the meat taste better when it finally comes time to cut open the skull and consume the brain. Slow roasting over a simmering fire for half the night while still alive is the preferred method to start the festivities. Your wife has such lovely brown skin, it would be a shame to see it roasted black while she was still alive."

Hans looked bitterly at Ha'ark, who was staring straight at him. "Bastards, you are all bastards," Hans snarled.

"Decide, human. I have no more time. And remember, even if you die, nothing will change for me. Others will simply fill your place. The machines will be built. But for you, your wife—the agony this night will be beyond your worst imaginings."

More screams came from the camp, each one tearing into his soul. He could somehow sense that Tamira must now be awake, huddled in the yurt, terrified. The thought of looking into her eyes as she died in agony was more than he could bear.

"Food. I want adequate food for the workers," he said gruffly.

The thin crease of a smile lit Ha'ark's features.

"One day in seven to rest. You'll get more work that way in the long run. Proper shelter, barracks for my people to live in. And exemption from the Moon Feast and, for that matter, from the pits at all times. If they work for you they live, if they have children the mothers are exempt from work while pregnant and the children are too until old enough."

"Agreed."

Hans sagged forward, feeling sick. They had finally broken him.

"And one final thing," his tormentor said. "We will talk, from time to time, human. There is something about you I like."

"The feeling is not mutual."

"But still we will talk. You choose well, human. It is better than having to kill you."

"So others will die in our place tonight."

"They are not your concern. Fifty thousand will die this night of feasting. It could have been you, your companions; now it is someone else. You will see tomorrow, as will the woman who waits for you." He paused for a moment. "And an old friend as well."

And others will die in my place, Hans thought bitterly.

"There is no room for pity in this world," Ha'ark snapped. "You have chosen to live, to choose otherwise is the act of a fool. Go and hold your woman tonight and know she will not scream in agony."

Ha'ark reined his horse around, and then almost as an afterthought he extended his hand, offering the plug of tobacco again. Hans took it.

"You know the way back. Now go. We will talk more another time. Tomorrow you will go to the place where the new factory is to be built. You and your people will build it and make it run. Do that and you will live. Fail me and …" He nodded down the hill, where the feasting had already begun.

With a soft laugh Ha'ark rode off into the gathering darkness, and half a dozen guards, who throughout the conversation had remained at a discreet distance, fell in around him.

Hans was tempted to throw the plug of tobacco to the ground but instead put it in his pocket. With his head low, he turned his mount, choking back tears of humiliation and rage.

"Hans?"

Startled, he looked up. "My God! Gregory?"

A lean and battered figure, dressed in the baggy white tunic and trousers of the Rus infantry, stepped from the side of his yurt and approached him nervously.

"Sir, is it really you?"

Hans slid off his horse and with hand extended raced up to the boy who had once been his chief of staff for Third Corps but was even better known as a budding Shakespearean actor, a Rus soldier who had become enamored of a copy of the plays brought from another world.

Gregory came to attention and started to salute, but Hans grabbed his hand, clutching it tight.

"Son, how the hell?"

Gregory shook his head. "I was taken about six months ago. We were running patrols out, pushing south and east, probing to find out whatever happened to the Merki and also trying to find out where these bastards were."

He hung his head, as if ashamed. "My unit, we fell right into a trap. It got wiped out, sir. I wish I'd been killed." His voice started to falter. "I woke up after the fight and they had me. I had a hundred men with me, sir. All of them …"

"Nothing to be ashamed of, son," Hans replied. "The same with me."

"They took me to this Ha'ark, or Redeemer, or whatever it is he thinks he is. He treated me well enough, sir, just wanted to learn the language. He told me this morning I might see you, but I didn't believe it until they brought me here a couple of minutes ago."

"This might not sound right," Hans replied eagerly, "but I'm almost glad to see you."

Gregory tried to smile.

"There's a couple other men here from Rus. Alexi Davidovich, he used to be an engineer, was in my unit—they got him as well. I also saw Hinsen. I never knew him before he deserted, but I kind of figured out it was him. He's in good with them, has his own yurt, a horse, even women. It'd be worth dying just to get him."

Hans shook his head. "Let it go. He'll get his reward. The main thing is to stay alive for now."

"What will they do to us?"

"In the end, they'll kill us," Hans said quietly, and he looked at his yurt, thinking of her inside. "But for now, we survive. We survive and find a way to escape. We have to get back to tell Andrew, even if it takes years to do it."

Ninth Year of the Republic

"Hans!"

Colonel Andrew Lawrence Keane sat bolt upright in his bed, his sheets soaked with sweat.

"Andrew, you all right?"

For a moment he couldn't speak. The image had been so clear.

"Andrew?"

"All right, Pat."

Andrew swung out from his bunk and stood up, shifting his feet to maintain balance as the train thundered around a sharp curve.

"It was Hans, wasn't it?"

Pat O'Donald, commander of the First Army of the Republic, sat up and tossed his blankets aside. Andrew nodded.

"Thought so. The old bugger came to me in my dreams as well." Sighing, Pat slipped out of the bunk. "Could use a spot of the cruel right now. Stills the nerves of an old soldier."

"I was thinking the same."

Andrew walked down the swaying corridor and stepped into the back parlor of his command car. Fortunately the room was empty. The staff was sleeping soundly in the next car forward. Andrew sat down on a hard-back bench while Pat threw a shovelful of coal into the stove and stoked it. Andrew started to shiver and Pat, seeing his discomfort, went back up to the bunks and returned with Andrew's sky-blue cape, which he draped over his shoulders.

Andrew nodded his thanks, wishing he had put his jacket on, but he hadn't wanted to deal with it. It had taken him a long time to get used to the fact that with only one arm, putting on a jacket could be something of a bother. At home Kathleen always helped him to dress, an almost comforting ritual, but he hated to impose on Pat, or anyone else, especially in the middle of the night. Pat next handed Andrew his glasses, which he worked open with his one hand and put on. Not being able to see, even when sitting in a darkened room, bothered him.

Pat settled down beside him and pulled a flask of vodka from his hip pocket, uncorked it, and ceremoniously passed it to Andrew.

"For Hans, God bless him."

"For Hans," Andrew whispered, and raising the flask, he took a long pull, grimacing as the fiery liquid burned his throat. He handed the flask back to Pat, who seemed to be praying. The old artilleryman quickly made the sign of the cross, raised the flask, and took a long pull himself.

"If Doctor Weiss gets up and sees you doing that on an empty stomach," Andrew said, "we'll both be in for it."

"I'm already up."

Emil Weiss, chief surgeon of the armies, stepped into the parlor, wearing a dressing gown and a nightcap. Yawning, he went over to the stove and opened the lid of the coffee pot to sniff its contents. Emil poured a steaming cup and sat down by Andrew. After sampling the brew, he wordlessly upended Pat's flask into his cup, then took another long sip.

"Almost like the old days," Emil grumbled. "Hard to believe it's been more than four years since our last campaign."

"We were dreaming of Hans," Andrew announced quietly.

"And?"

Andrew sighed and looked out the window at the steppe rolling by, shimmering silver beneath the glow of the twin moons. After the disaster to the Third Corps in the Battle of the Potomac, he had always assumed that Hans had died fighting. But since then there had been disquieting rumors. A Cartha merchant reporting seeing him, and several escaped slaves of the Merki and one from the Bantag came bearing reports of a "Yankee." It was well known that the traitor Hinsen had gone into the service of the Bantag, and Andrew always preferred to believe that such reports were about him. But the last escapee to come through the lines had insisted that the "Yankee's" name was "Ghanz." Given the guttural pronunciations of the Horde language, he could easily see that as a corruption of his mentor's name.

"He's dead, Andrew. I assumed that on the day he was lost," Emil said coldly. "It was the best way to think of him."

"I never could. He has drifted in my dreams for four years now. But tonight it was stronger. I saw him in what looked like hell, flames all around him." Andrew lowered his head, his voice thick. "He was in hell and alive."

The low, mournful whistle of the train interrupted his thoughts. He turned to look out the window as they thundered across a bridge and past a station. Village lights whisked by.

"Where are we?" Emil asked.

Andrew strained to see the station sign, but it shot past in the shadows. "I think we're out of Roum. Could be Asgard."

Pat grinned and stood up to look out the window. "Now there's folks who know how to brew beer."

"Barbarians," Emil sniffed.

"Good fighters," Andrew replied. "Damn, this is a strange world. Descendants of ancient Germany next to Romans, and medieval Japan eight hundred miles ahead. How many damn gates were there back home?"

"Well, the Vikings must have come through the same one we did, down near Bermuda," Emil said. "There's the one in the Mediterranean—that explains the Romans and Carthaginians, Egyptians and Greeks. The one that got the Rus, that's beyond me. It could have been a weird one that opened up only once. I've even been thinking that maybe there's only one, somewhere out in space above our world. As the world rotates on its axis, the gate above is pointed at different places."

Pat looked at him wide-eyed. "In space, you say. Why, what would keep it up?"

"It's orbiting."

׳ "Don't be foolish. There's nothing out there except the stars. How could anyone get something up there? You're daft."

Andrew was barely listening as Emil and Pat launched into an argument about the Tunnels while finishing off the rest of the vodka.

Damn, how I miss the old days, Hans, Andrew thought sadly. You'd be sitting in the corner, matching Pat drink for drink, usually saying nothing, just watching, smiling occasionally, but always thinking.

The old days … Funny, the old days were years of unrelenting fear, staring disaster in the face and knowing that you didn't stand a chance of survival. Of the more than five hundred men who had come through the Tunnels into this world, members of the old Thirty-fifth Maine, Forty-fourth New York Artillery, and the crew of the Ogunquit, fewer than two hundred were still alive. And as for the Rus who had started the human rebellion on this planet, more than half were dead.